PHOENIX — NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the league's ability to return to the attendance of more than one million fans during the playoffs has helped it prevent financial losses related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We did a little better than we initially anticipated," Silver said ahead of Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Tuesday. "We don't have exact numbers yet, but we might be down about a third in revenue, something there instead of 40%."
Silver said the burden of those losses would be shared by both franchise owners and players, because because of the way the league splits basketball-related income (BRI), he hoped that "if things continue on track, we will May go ahead. New season, next year, which looks a lot like normal" and "we may have weathered [the pandemic] very well."
As he does every year before the finals, Silver addresses many of the NBA's issues: the future of play-in tournaments; Injuries to star players; The league's record on promoting social justice following last season's joint resolution and commitment to do so with the players' union; Detailed; Will the Toronto Raptors return to play in Canada next season; And progress—or lack thereof—in creating more diversity in NBA coaching and front-office ranks.
Silver said keeping players on the floor is paramount and they "no doubt" contributed to injuries in this year's condensed schedule, additional health and safety protocols and other challenges. But, Silver said, "none of it is exact science. It's also something that pre-COVID, as you all know, we were very focused in the league."
For example, Silver said, "rests at rest increased by more than 100% this year compared to last year" but injuries still increased.
"The issue we're trying to get to the root of is: 'Does comfort work, clearly? Does load management work?'" Silver said. “Most surprising, as I said, it is not just about injuries this season; we have seen this upward trend for many years. You would like to believe that with the investment, the level of sophistication, the doctors The number of, the amount of analysis we look at, the data we collect that we couldn't do in the old days, that keeping pandemics aside, we would have seen an improvement - and we haven't seen that yet. "
Silver said he expected teams to come to see their injury and management strategies in a more communal way, and not as proprietary information, because the impact on the entire league was so significant.
As for the play-in tournament, which garnered bigger ratings and better competition at the end of the regular season, but also criticized stars such as LeBron James and Luka Doncic, Silver said he thought the tournament was here to stay but the league would be Consider changing the format.
"Ultimately," Silver said, "although there were critics, not only LeBron but others who weren't in favor of it and maybe some teams that weren't thrilled with it, I think overall it was very positive for the league and the players." "
The idea of expansion, which was raised as an idea to generate revenue during the pandemic, seems to have been put on the backburner, Silver said.
"I know we were looking more seriously at expansion when revenue declined," Silver said. "It didn't work out exactly the same way, largely because expansion is a multi-year process. So, it wasn't like the pandemic came, we're down 40%, we can quickly collect some expansion revenue.
"It's true that we actually had some time to think about it a bit more when we were initially off, and we were meeting with our teams more often. But it seemed that the general consensus was definitely there." It was during a pandemic that was not the right time to expand but we should continue to consider it."
On the issue of diversity in the NBA's front office and coaching staff, Silver said, "Obviously we have seen positive growth in terms of the number of vacancies" but that "it was important not to rest on our honor there."